"A DHL perspective on the future of packaging in the logistics industry.
Packaging is fundamental to the logistics industry. It makes products safer and easier to handle, and protects them during storage, transport, and delivery. Modern packaging is so ubiquitous that it is easy to forget just how remarkable it is. Centuries of innovation and refinement have produced packaging technologies that deliver high performance in a bewildering range of applications and at extremely low cost.
Yet there is growing evidence that today’s approaches to packaging are struggling to meet the changing needs of companies, consumers, and the wider environment. This is exacerbated by the fact that different stakeholders have different, often unaligned packaging needs. The result can be primary, secondary, and tertiary packaging with little consideration of impact on the supply chain ecosystem. The increasing speed, scale, and complexity of modern logistics processes – especially those driven by the growth of e-commerce and omni-channel retail – are driving up packaging costs and creating inefficiencies in the downstream supply chain. Companies want their branded packaging to present them in a positive light, but consumers are frustrated if this packaging is hard to use and difficult to recycle. Packaging waste represents a significant environmental challenge."
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